“You’re a hero.”

“Stop saying that. I’m not,” Kent insisted. “I didn’t do anything that anyone else in the department wouldn’t have done.”

“But they didn’t step in front of that bullet,” Erin said. “You did.”

“It was reflex, nothing more.”

“Why won’t you take credit for it? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

He arched his brows. “Would you have believed me?”

“Probably not. I would have figured you’d made it up to impress me, to get me to change my mind about you.”

“So why do you believe it now?”

Dear Reader,

I think it’s important that we all have a hero—someone we aspire to be like or someone who inspires us to be more than we are or someone who takes care of us. When I was growing up, my big brother was my hero. He defended me against the neighborhood bully and piggybacked me across the creek because I couldn’t swim. Heroes also protect us—like the heroes in my CITIZEN’S POLICE ACADEMY series.

Writing Once a Hero, the second book in the miniseries (the first was also part of the MEN MADE IN AMERICA miniseries—Once a Lawman, HAR, Feb. 2009), was very important to me. Sergeant Kent Terlecki is a hero whose story needed to be told even though he’s uncomfortable with being called that. He doesn’t consider himself to be special, and neither does heroine Erin Powell. Well, not at first!

I hope you enjoy their story, in which they both learn Once a Hero, always a hero.

Happy reading!

Lisa Childs

Once a Hero
Lisa Childs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bestselling, award-winning author Lisa Childs writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Harlequin/Silhouette Books. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her Web site, www.lisachilds.com, or by snail mail at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435.

With much gratitude to the

Grand Rapids Police Department for helping me

understand and appreciate the very special heroes

that police officers are.

And with love for my brothers,

Tony, Mike and Chris—for showing me my

first examples of heroism by being my heroes!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

Conversations stopped and heads swiveled toward her as Erin Powell walked into the meeting room on the third floor of the Lakewood Police Department. Since she was the first citizen to arrive for the Citizen’s Police Academy program, the people staring at her were men and women “in blue.” The Lakewood, Michigan, police department, however, wore black uniforms, which she believed matched one particular officer’s soul.

Despite all the stares, her gaze was drawn to his. Sergeant Kent Terlecki’s steely-gray eyes must have been how he’d earned his nickname Bullet. She had asked the blond-haired man a couple of times for an explanation of his moniker, but he had shrugged off that question, just as he’d shrugged off most of her others. Some public information officer he’d proved to be for the department—a media liaison who wouldn’t deal with the media.

Ignoring the unwelcoming looks and the awkward silence, Erin squared her shoulders and walked across the room toward where all the officers stood against the far wall. She dropped her organizer onto a table, the thud echoing in the large space.

As if he intended to cite her for disturbing the peace, Terlecki stalked over to her. His long-legged strides closed the distance between them in short order.

“Speak of the devil,” she murmured.

“I’m not, but that doesn’t stop you from demonizing me,” he accused as he held out a folded section of the Lakewood Chronicle.

Satisfaction filled her as she stared down at the article she had written—about him. She wanted everyone to see Kent Terlecki as the fraud he really was, and so she had titled her article, Public Information Officer’s Desperate PR Ploy.

“Did I hit a nerve?” she asked, tipping up her chin to meet that hard gaze of his. While she was above average height, he was taller, with broad shoulders. But he didn’t intimidate her, although she suspected he tried.

“You’d have to actually write a grain of truth to hit a nerve, so I don’t think there’s any chance that you’ll ever do that, Ms. Powell.”

Ignoring the sting of his insult, Erin smiled and asked, “If you think I’m such a hack, why did you let me into the class?”

The paper rustled as he clenched his hand into a fist. “Despite what your article claims, I’m not in charge of the Citizen’s Police Academy—not as a desperate maneuver to improve the department’s image or my own. Neither needs improving.”

“Really?” She lifted a brow skeptically. “According to the last poll in the Chronicle, the public believes the Lakewood PD could use some improvement.”

“That poll was hardly fair,” he griped. “There was no option for ‘no improvement necessary.’”

“Of course you would think no improvement was necessary.”

He lifted the paper. “Instead of writing about me, you should have written about the true purpose of this program.”

“And what is that?” Although she had signed up to participate, she wasn’t entirely certain what the academy did offer.

“Watch Commander Lieutenant Patrick O’Donnell started the program three years ago so that interested members of the community could learn more about the department, about police procedure and about the challenges officers face while doing their job.”

His words grated her nerves. Whenever Terlecki actually deigned to speak, it was always in the form of a press release. To irritate him, she arched a brow and scoffed, “You have challenges?”

He sighed. “I have you, Ms. Powell.”

“Oh, so if it was up to you, I wouldn’t be here.” She had already guessed as much.

The sergeant planted his palms on the table between them and leaned forward until his face nearly touched hers. With his square jaw clenched, he lowered his voice and murmured, “If it was up to me…”

Erin drew in a shaky breath and braced herself as a rush of adrenaline quickened her pulse and warmed her skin. It had to be adrenaline; she could not be attracted to this man.

“If it was up to you?” she pressed.

His pupils widened until black swallowed the gray irises. “I’d—”

“I hope I didn’t miss anything,” a woman interrupted as she rushed up to join them.

Sergeant Terlecki stepped back. “Not at all. Class hasn’t started yet,” he assured her, before turning and walking back to his fellow officers.

Erin released the breath she’d been holding, as the other woman emitted a lusty sigh.

“Oh, I think I did miss something,” the newcomer insisted, staring after Terlecki.

Erin pushed her organizer farther down the table and settled onto a chair away from the younger woman. Erin was the one who’d missed something—hearing about whatever Sergeant Kent Terlecki wanted to do to her. But given the articles she wrote about how inept he was at his job, at keeping the public informed, she could guess….

HE WANTED TO WRING her pretty little neck. Kent relaxed his fingers, which had clutched the Chronicle so tightly the newsprint had torn. He tossed it on the table behind which most of the officers were talking amongst themselves, as the citizens filed in for class.

The watch commander, Lieutenant Patrick O’Donnell, glanced up from marking notes on index cards. “So what’s her deal with you?” he asked, nodding toward Erin Powell. “Did you break her heart?”

Kent snorted. “I doubt she actually has a heart. Or a soul.”

Paddy, as he was called by his friends, chuckled. “How do you really feel about her?”

Kent wished he knew. She was so damn infuriating, yet she fascinated him, too. “I think I need my head examined for agreeing to let her join the academy.”

Paddy narrowed his eyes, which were nearly the same reddish brown color of his hair, and scrutinized Kent. “I left it up to you. I would have been happy to decline her application.”

Paddy had begun the Lakewood Citizen’s Police Academy before he’d been promoted to watch commander, but even after his promotion, he continued as lead instructor. The program was his pet project and meant a lot to the lieutenant.

“I’m sorry about her article,” Kent murmured.

Paddy shrugged. “Why? You can’t control what she writes.”

No, he couldn’t, despite his best efforts. She always found something wrong with his press releases about accidents or shootings. She always accused him of hiding something from the public no matter how open he was with information. “She didn’t give you the credit you deserve.”

The lieutenant chuckled again. “I’m perfectly happy with her not writing about me.”

“That’s why I okayed her joining,” Kent admitted. “I’d hate to think what she would have written if you’d turned down her application.” Chances are she would have accused them of conspiring against her.

He glanced over, to find her scribbling something on her ever-present pad. Since class hadn’t started yet, he doubted she was jotting down notes on the CPA. She was probably working on another article about how incompetent he was in his undeserved position.

A lock of silky brown hair slid across her cheek until she pushed it behind her ear. Her eyes were the same chocolate-brown. And her figure…it was tall and slender, with curves in all the right places. How could she be so damn pretty, yet such a witch?

“I’m really not worried about her writing about me,” Paddy assured him. “She seems pretty focused on you.”

“Too focused.” Since Erin had been hired at the Chronicle a year ago, Kent had often been the subject of her articles. She was young, ambitious and obviously trying to make a name for herself, so he tried not to take it personally, but he couldn’t help thinking that it was personal.

Again he looked toward the table where she sat. While the young girl who’d interrupted them waved, Erin glared at him. “I don’t know what I could have done to her,” he murmured.

Paddy followed his gaze. “You’re sure you didn’t break her heart?”

Kent shook his head. He would have remembered if he’d ever dated Erin Powell. Her dark hair skimmed the edge of her delicate jaw, emphasizing those wide brown eyes and sharp cheekbones. She was really beautiful, but he’d rather date one of the K9s than her. The police dogs were less likely to bite.

FRUSTRATION SET ERIN’S nerves on edge. She hadn’t expected much from the Citizen’s Police Academy, since she was convinced that Terlecki had started it to promote the glowing image he constantly tried to sell of the police department. He had some reporters convinced he was great and wonderful; the local television networks fawned over him.

Erin had intended to make the most of joining the program, but even when the district captains and the chief had introduced the officers of the Lakewood Police Department, the public information officer had been the one who’d answered or evaded her questions.

“Chief,” she called out as she followed the giant of a man down the corridor leading away from the conference room. After the chief had given his speech, the watch commander had called for a break.

Chief Archer stopped midstride and glanced at Erin over his broad shoulder. “Ms. Powell, can I help you?”

“Yes,” she said, some of her frustration easing now that she had him alone. “You can answer some of my questions.”

Archer grinned the infamous trust-inspiring grin that had probably helped him earn the top spot in the department at a relatively young age. “You have more? It seems Sergeant Terlecki answered everything you asked during class.”

“Not the ones about him,” she pointed out.

The chief tilted his head, studying her. “What would you like to know about the sergeant?”

“How did he get his cushy job as your public information officer?”

The chief’s grin faded. “He earned it, Ms. Powell.”

“How? What did he have to do to become your golden boy?” she persisted. The nickname she’d given Terlecki fit him more aptly than Bullet. “How many innocent people did he have to arrest?” Besides her brother.

The chief’s jaw grew taut. “You really know nothing about the sergeant, Ms. Powell.”

She knew more than they thought she did. Even if Terlecki remembered Mitchell, he wouldn’t connect her to her half brother because of their different last names. Despite the year she’d spent scrutinizing the sergeant’s reports, she hadn’t found the proof she needed to free Mitchell. “He didn’t hold the Lakewood Police Department arrest record before his promotion?”

“Ms. Powell, the sergeant is—”

“The one who’s supposed to be answering your questions,” Terlecki interjected as he joined them in the hallway. “Thank you, sir. I know you’re in a hurry, so I’ll handle Ms. Powell.”

The chief sighed. “Kent, you should just tell her—”

Terlecki interrupted again with a shake of his head, then waved off his boss as if Kent was the superior officer.

“Tell me what?” Erin asked as he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and drew her down the hall.

“Nothing you need to know,” he said dismissively.

Since she’d started at the Chronicle, he had been trying to dismiss her. She tugged on her wrist, but his grasp tightened. “So this is how you’re going to ‘handle’ me?”

After leading her into an empty room, Kent closed the door, then released her. “I’d hardly risk an accusation of police brutality, Ms. Powell. I simply thought you’d like some privacy for your interview.”

Shut inside a small room with no furniture, only cardboard boxes sitting about, Erin realized how completely alone they were. Terlecki stood between her and the door, blocking her escape. Unnerved, she licked her lips and repeated his last word. “Interview?”

“You were asking the chief about me,” he said, his deep voice vibrating with a hint of innuendo, as if her interest in him was personal.

Which it was, but not in the way his ego must have led him to believe.

“I—I…” she stammered, heat rushing to her face with shame and annoyance that she had let him rattle her.

“You don’t want to ask me about me?” he asked, his gray eyes glinting with amusement.

“You don’t answer my questions, Sergeant,” she reminded him.

“Because they’re not pertinent.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” she pointed out.

“That you’re impertinent?”

She bit her lip to hold in a reaction to his insult. She couldn’t let him get to her anymore; he was already much too arrogant. “It’s not for you to decide what the public needs to know.”

“The public?” He arched a blond brow. “I don’t think the public cares how I came by my cushy job.” He stepped closer. “Why do you care, Ms. Powell?”

Despite the adrenaline causing her legs to tremble, Erin refused to back away. “I’m a reporter, Sergeant.”

“You don’t need to remind me of that.” Kent wasn’t likely to forget, when all she’d ever done was fire questions at him. But sometimes, noticing how her eyes sparkled and her skin flushed when she argued with him, he forgot that she was a reporter who seemed to hate his guts, and he saw her as an exciting woman.

“Being a reporter, I have certain instincts,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “which are screaming at me that there’s a story behind your made-up position in the department.”

“Made-up?”

“Public information officer?” she scoffed. “That hardly sounds like a real job.”

He stepped closer, until his badge brushed her shoulder. She was tall, even without the low heels she wore, and slender, in black pants and a lightweight red sweater. Pitching his voice low, he asked, “What do you know about positions, Ms. Powell?”

Her eyes widening, Erin stumbled back. “Sergeant!”

“Positions within the department,” he explained, as if he hadn’t baited her, as if he didn’t enjoy rattling her cage. Hell, that was the most exciting part of his cushy job. Although she was a pain in the ass, she wasn’t boring. “What did you think I meant?”

“I’m never sure,” she admitted. “You talk out of both sides of your mouth.”

He grinned at her insult. “Then I guess I’m good at my made-up position.”

“So you admit it was?”

Kent swallowed a groan. He probably shouldn’t have talked to her at all, let alone dragged her into an empty room. “And you wonder why I don’t answer your questions….”

“Since you’re not going to, let me out of here.” Erin pushed past him to open the door and step into the hall. Beyond the conference room, in the atrium, the elevator dinged. She watched the doors close on most of the CPA participants, on their way to the ground floor.

“Look what you made me do,” she declared. “I missed the last part of the class.”

“Just tonight’s,” he reminded her. “You have fourteen more to go.”

“You’re not going to get me kicked out of the program?”

After what he’d heard her asking the chief, he admitted, “I’d love to.”

“I’m sure you would. But you said you’re not in charge of the academy, remember?” she taunted.

No one had ever antagonized him as she did, not even some of the belligerent drunks he’d pulled over during his years as a patrol officer. All he had to do to get her tossed from the program was tell Paddy he’d changed his mind. And Kent was damn tempted to do just that.

“So what are you in charge of, as public information officer?” she asked. “Damage control?”

“You.”

“You’re only here to muzzle me? Did you purposely keep me from the second half of the program? Is there something you didn’t want me to hear?” She fired the questions in her usual manner, without giving him time to answer one before she moved to the next.

He couldn’t get her thrown out of the program. She would never let up on the department—or him—if he did. But he hadn’t approved her application because he feared what she would print. He wanted to change her opinion of the department. The chief and his fellow officers worked hard for the community; they didn’t deserve the bad press she’d been giving them.

“You can find out what you’ve missed. I’ll take you where they’ve all probably gone,” he offered.

“Home,” she scoffed.

“No. There’s another place.” Where officers went before or after their shifts, to eat, relax and just hang out with people who understood the complexities of doing their job. They wouldn’t appreciate his bringing her there. “Just don’t make me regret this….”

“YOU BROUGHT ME TO A BAR? This lighthouse is a tavern?” she asked as she passed through the door he held open for her. While all conversation didn’t cease as it had at the police department earlier, some people stopped talking and turned toward her and the sergeant. But the jukebox continued to play, over the sounds of several conversations and raucous laughter.

“It’s the Lighthouse Bar and Grille,” he replied, probably thinking she hadn’t seen the sign when they’d pulled into the parking lot in their respective cars.

The mingled aromas of burgers, steaks and salty fries filled the air. Peanut shells crunched beneath her feet as she followed Kent across the room toward a long table near the game area. Several members of the Citizen’s Police Academy sat together. She glanced around and noticed that except for those civilian patrons, the rest of the faces were familiar from law enforcement.

“How have I never known about this place?” she wondered aloud. She’d been living here a year. How had she not known that the Lakewood PD hung out at a lighthouse on the Lake Michigan shore? She’d asked around if there was any place the officers frequented, but no one had told her about this place. Out of loyalty to Terlecki?

“You don’t exactly inspire confidences,” Kent pointed out.

“So why did you bring me here?” she asked.

His lips lifted in a slight grin. “Where did you think I was leading you? Off the pier?”

“Of course. Right into the lake.” She had considered that might be what he’d had in mind. “Don’t tell me you weren’t tempted.”

“Trying to put words in my mouth again, Ms. Powell?”

“There isn’t room for me to put words,” she insisted. “Not with your foot there most of the time.”

He shook his head and laughed. “Nice try, but you’re not going to get to me.”

“We both know I get to you,” she said, “but then I don’t expect you to admit that.” She had to find some other way to extract the truth from him, because she had a horrible feeling he’d covered his tracks too well for her to get the evidence she needed. And if she didn’t find proof, she couldn’t help the man who mattered most to her.

“Erin,” Kent began, but he wasn’t the only one calling her name.

She ignored him, leaving his side to join the other members of the CPA. An older couple who had admitted joining the program for thrills waved at her. “Look,” the woman, Bernie, said. “We’re just like the police officers.”

Most of Erin’s classmates sat around the table, except for two teachers, the youth minister and the saleswoman who’d, thankfully, taken the chair between Erin and the college girl before class started. The participants all beamed as if they felt a sense of belonging—a sense that Erin envied, doubting she would ever feel it herself. Most of Lakewood, out of loyalty to the police department or Kent personally, disapproved of her articles.

The college girl who had earlier interrupted her conversation with Terlecki grabbed Erin’s arm and pulled her down onto a chair beside her. “What’s going on with you two?” she asked, her voice giddy with curiosity. She turned away from Erin, tracking Terlecki’s long strides toward the bar.

“Uh…” Erin searched her memory for the girl’s name from the introduction part of the class. “Amy. Nothing’s going on, really.”

The woman sitting on the other side of Erin snorted in derision.

Amy giggled. “See, everyone knows that you two have something going on.”

“No, we don’t,” Erin insisted.

“But you both disappeared during the class, then you just walked in together,” the blonde stated, unwilling to let it drop.

“Come on,” the other woman said, pulling Erin to her feet. Despite her thin build, her grip was strong. And despite her youthful appearance, fine lines on her fair skin betrayed her age as probably almost twice the college girl’s. “Let’s play darts.”

Erin followed, willing to use any excuse to escape the nosy girl, even though she hadn’t thrown darts since she had with her older brother. And now she couldn’t play with him…thanks to Kent Terlecki, who had sent Mitchell to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. Mitchell would have never dealt drugs.

“I’m surprised you walked in at all,” the older woman mused, “let alone with Sergeant Terlecki.” She pulled darts from the board and stepped back. Like Amy, she had long blond hair, but a couple of silver strands shone among the platinum. “I thought he’d finally gotten rid of you.”

Erin turned toward her, surprised by her barely veiled animosity. She expected it from police officers, but not civilians, although some of them weren’t shy about telling her she was wrong. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name.”

“Marla. Marla Halliday.” She waited, as if Erin was supposed to recognize her name. Then she added, “My son is a police officer—Sergeant Bartholomew ‘Billy’ Halliday with the vice unit.”

The name still meant nothing to Erin—it hadn’t come up in any of her research—but the woman’s attitude made complete sense now. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. When you attack the department, you’re attacking every one of those hardworking officers—not just Sergeant Terlecki,” Marla admonished, with a mother’s fierce protectiveness.

“I’m sure your son is a fine officer, but—”

“That’s your problem, honey. You’re sure regardless of the facts. You’re sure even when you’re wrong.” Marla’s porcelain skin reddened. “Not that my son isn’t a fine officer, because he is. But he’s not Sergeant Terlecki.”

“Then he is a fine officer.” He wouldn’t frame a man for a crime he hadn’t committed just to pad his arrest record and further his career, as Kent Terlecki had.

“But Billy’s not a hero,” his mother said.

“You’re saying Sergeant Terlecki—Kent Terlecki is a hero?”

Marla nodded. “Why do you think they call him Bullet?”

“I have no idea.” The mystery of his nickname had been bugging her since she had moved to the west Michigan town of Lakewood. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Hey, Ms. Halliday,” Kent said as he joined them.

“Do you have some kind of radar for whenever I ask a question?” Erin asked, her stomach knotted with frustration over how close she’d come to learning one of his secrets before he’d thwarted her again.

“You have to be careful of this one,” Kent said to Marla Halliday. “She tries to interview everyone.”

“No interview here,” Marla said. “We were just going to play darts.” Her blue eyes twinkled. Kent grimaced, but she ignored him. “Here, Erin, why don’t you go first?”

Erin closed her fingers around the proffered bunch of brightly colored darts. She chose one to throw, then turned to the board to find someone had pinned a blown-up picture of her there.

Not someone. Him.

Kent Terlecki was no hero.

Chapter Two

A chuckle at the shocked expression on her face rumbled in Kent’s chest, but he suppressed it. Instead he moved up behind her, then closed his hand around her fingers holding the dart.

“See?” he said as he lifted her hand and guided the throw. “A bull’s-eye is right between the eyes.”

“My eyes,” she muttered. As the dart pierced the paper across the bridge of her nose, she winced.

“Your chin and ears are five points, your mouth and cheeks ten and your—”

“I get the idea,” she interrupted, tugging her hand free and stepping away.

He hadn’t realized he was still holding her. Or that Billy’s mom had left them, to return to the others. Maybe it was good he wasn’t out in the field anymore. His instincts were not as sharp as they’d once been.

“And I get to you,” she said, “whether you’re willing to admit it or not.”

“Why?” He asked the question that had been nagging at him for a year.

“Why do I get to you?” she asked, her lips tilting up in a smug smile. “Or why aren’t you willing to tell the truth?”

“Why do you want to get to me?” he wondered. “I’m always the victim of your poison pen.”

“A little paranoid, Sergeant?” she teased, her dark eyes gleaming with amusement. And triumph.

He shook his head. “No. I used to think it wasn’t personal. That I was your target just because I represented the department.”

“Now you’re a martyr,” she quipped.

Remembering all those people who had tried to make him one, he suppressed a shudder. “God, no.”

“Oh, I forgot. You’re a hero,” she said. “That’s what Mrs. Halliday called you.”

The act that others called heroic had been sheer instinct—an instinct every cop had. He didn’t doubt that any one of his fellow officers would have done the same thing he had. “I’m no hero.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

He clenched his jaw so hard that his back teeth ground together. The woman was damn infuriating. “So it is personal.”

“You’re paranoid,” she said, but her gaze slid away from his.

“I heard what you said to the chief,” he admitted. “That you think I got my job by arresting innocent people. Why would you ask that?”

Sure, a lot of people claimed innocence, but no one he’d arrested had ever gotten away with their crimes. There’d always been too much evidence.

She shrugged. “How else would you have racked up the arrest record you have?”

“Because a lot of people commit crimes, Ms. Powell.” He stated what he considered obvious. “And I’m good at catching them.”

“Not anymore,” she taunted. “You sit behind a desk now. Your badge is all for show.”

Damn, she had struck that nerve he’d sworn she couldn’t. But she had actually spoken a grain of truth for once. Sometimes he did feel as if his badge were only a prop.

Her eyes sparkled as if she’d picked up on her direct hit to his pride. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” she asked. “To move up in the department, to get ahead?”

Getting desked was the last thing he’d wanted, but she was the last person to whom he would make that confession. “I know what you think of me, however unfounded,” Kent said. “Do you know what I think of you?”

“I can guess,” she replied, gesturing toward the dartboard.

He shook his head. “That wasn’t my idea. Someone else blew up the photo that runs with your byline, and pinned it there.” For him. He couldn’t claim that he hadn’t appreciated the gesture, though.

“I don’t care what you think of me, Sergeant,” she insisted.

“I’m going to tell you anyway,” he assured her.

“On the record or off?”

“Everything seems to go on the record with you.” Which he would come to regret, he knew.

“The public has a right to know….”

“Do they know about you?” he wondered. “That you’re ambitious to the point of ruthless? That you’ll use anything and anyone to further your career?”

She shook her head. “The person you just described sounds more like you. You don’t know me at all, Sergeant.”

“Then I guess we’re even.”

He finally admitted to himself the rest of his reason for allowing her into the program. He hadn’t wanted to change her opinion of just the department—he’d wanted to change her opinion of him, too. After a year of trying to deal with her, he should have known better. She was a lost cause.

ERIN TIPTOED INTO her dark apartment as if she were a kid sneaking in past curfew. And just like when she was a kid, she got caught. A lamp snapped on and flooded the living room with light.

Was this actually her apartment? Someone had tidied up. Books had been put back on the built-in cherry-wood shelves. Nothing but polish covered the hardwood floor. Even the cushions were on the couch. If not for having just unlocked the door, she would have suspected she’d stumbled into the wrong place.

“You’re late,” Kathryn Powell pointed out from where she sat primly, with her ankles crossed, on the sofa. Had her mother been sleeping like that or just sitting in the dark, waiting for her?

Erin blinked against the glare of the halogen bulb of the floor lamp. “I’m sorry.”

She should have called, but she hadn’t planned to go anywhere after class. Once she’d arrived at the Lighthouse, she hadn’t dared to call, what with the rowdy background noise. Her mother would have gotten the wrong idea. She tended to think the worst of her children.

Kathryn sniffed as if doubting Erin’s sincerity, and patted her short brown hair, not a single strand of which was displaced. “Your father is upset that I’m not home yet. He doesn’t want me making that long drive alone at this hour.”

Her parents lived about seventy miles southeast of Lakewood, in the austere Tudor home where Erin and her older brother, Mitchell, had grown up, in East Grand Rapids. Her brother had moved to Lakewood for college, and then, after dropping out, had stayed on because he’d liked being close to the water.

“You can stay over,” Erin offered, although her shoulders tensed at the thought of more quality time with Mom. Despite her mother’s best efforts, she would never be able to tidy up Erin’s life.

Kathryn shook her head. “I didn’t bring any of my things with me. I didn’t think your class was supposed to go so late.”

“It wasn’t.” It hadn’t. “Or I wouldn’t have signed up. You can stay, Mom. You can borrow something of mine.”

“No, I need to get home to your father.”

Mitchell had resented their mother’s devotion to Erin’s dad, his stepfather. That devotion used to inspire Erin to want that kind of love for herself someday, but she’d given up on her dream of love for her dream of justice. She had to clear Mitchell’s name and get his conviction overturned.

Erin passed through the neat living room to the hall, traveling a few steps to lean against the doorjamb of a bedroom. A night-light with a clown’s face illuminated a jumble of blocks and cars littering the racetrack rug. She ignored the clutter and focused on the bed and the small body curled into a ball under the covers.

“How was he?” she asked her mother, who had followed her—despite her desire to get home to her husband.

Kathryn sighed. “Hyperactive. And much too dependent on you.”

Guilt surpassed the defensiveness her mother usually inspired in her, and Erin admitted, “Maybe I shouldn’t have signed up for the course.”

Kathryn stepped closer and sniffed her hair. “You smell like you’ve been in a bar instead of a classroom.”

Erin shook her head. “Restaurant. It was easier to do interviews there than at the police department.” Or it would have been if she’d actually managed to speak to anyone without Sergeant Terlecki’s interference.

“You’re wasting your time,” her mother claimed. “If what you’re really looking for is some evidence to clear your brother, you’re not going to find anything.”

“Mom, I have to help him.” She would never be able to turn her back on her half brother the way her parents had. “Not just for Mitchell but for Jason, too. He can’t keep losing people he loves.”

That was why her nephew had become so attached to Erin—he was afraid she would leave him, as his father had four years ago and then his mother just last year. Mitchell’s girlfriend had found someone else, someone who didn’t want to raise another man’s child. So except for Erin’s parents, who tended to be more disapproving than affectionate, Erin was all the little boy had now.

“If you want to help your brother,” Kathryn advised, “then get him to admit the truth.”

“He’s not the one lying.” Kent Terlecki was. He had to be, or else her brother was one of those many people of whom Kent had spoken who committed crimes. And her older brother, her hero growing up, could not be a criminal.

A CURSE BROKE THE SILENCE in the living room, then books and CDs toppled to the hardwood floor as someone banged into a table in the dark. Kent snapped on a lamp, the light revealing the intruder: a tall, wiry guy with dark hair and a beard, dressed in dark clothes.

“What the hell—” Billy griped as he rubbed his knee. “Why are you sitting up in the dark?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Your back bothering you?”

Kent shook his head. “Nope,” he said, ignoring the twinge along his spine. He had grown used to it over the past few years. “That’s not the pain keeping me awake.”

“The reporter?” Billy asked, snorting with disgust.

He nodded.

“I heard you brought her to the Lighthouse.” Billy dropped onto the old plaid couch across from the leather chair where Kent sat.

“You talked to your mom?” He grinned as he thought of Marla Halliday and how she’d led Erin to the dartboard. “Did you know she was joining the class?”

Billy shook his head. “I wish Paddy would’ve given me the heads-up he gave you about Powell.”

“You’re lucky you have a mom who wants to be involved in what you’re doing,” Kent told him. He’d been estranged from his folks since he’d chosen to go to the police academy instead of continuing the Terlecki tradition of working the family farm in northern Michigan.

“Mom can’t be involved in my life now,” Billy said, sinking deeper into the couch. Exhaustion blackened the skin beneath his eyes, making him look older than his twenty-six years. “You know how vice is….”

Deep cover. Streets. Bars. Abandoned houses and back alleys. Late nights and dangerous people. Kent had loved his years in vice. That was where he had made the majority of his arrests. Erin was delusional to think he’d had to frame innocent people; he hadn’t met many innocent people during that time. Or now. Somehow he suspected she was every bit as dangerous as the criminals he’d dealt with during his stint in vice.

She sure had it in for him for some reason, finding fault with everything he said or did.

“How come you came home?” Kent asked.

Not that Billy spent every night in the drug house the department had set up in the seedy area of Lakewood. The cover wasn’t so deep that the officers weren’t entitled to some downtime. Some officers even worked a regular twelve-hour shift. Billy wasn’t one of them.

The other man yawned and flopped his head against the back of the sofa. “I wanted to get some sleep without having to keep one eye open to watch my back.”

“I remember feeling like that,” Kent sympathized.

“You should still feel like that,” his roommate warned him, “with that reporter out to get you. Why the hell did you okay Erin Powell getting into the CPA?”

He sighed. “I wanted to prove to her that the department has nothing to hide.”

“She’s not as interested in the department as she is you, Bullet,” Billy warned him. Some of the weariness left his dark eyes as he leaned forward and studied Kent. “You’re not interested in her, are you?”

Kent choked on a laugh. “Talk about having to sleep with one eye open…”

Not that he expected they would do much sleeping if they ever stopped fighting. Erin Powell was one passionate woman. Too bad her passion was hating him.

“We’re talking Fatal Attraction, huh?” Billy chuckled.

“Oh, yeah,” Kent agreed. For me. How the heck could he be attracted to a woman who obviously couldn’t stand him? Especially since he really didn’t like her much, either. But she was so damn beautiful….

“So why the hell did you bring her to the ’house?” Billy asked again, too good an officer to give up.

But after serving as public information officer for three years, Kent was good at sidestepping questions he didn’t want to answer. “She saw the picture you pinned to the dartboard,” he said instead.

Billy chuckled again. “That should be a warning to her to lay off. You showed her?”

“Your mom did.”

The younger man sighed. “Yeah, now that my mom knows where the ’house is, there’ll be no escaping her.”

“Your mom is great,” Kent countered, staunchly defending Marla Halliday. “And tough.” She’d had Billy when she was seventeen, and had raised him all by herself.

“She’s not your mom,” Billy reminded him.

That hadn’t stopped Kent from wishing he’d had someone like her in his life—someone who actually gave a damn about him. “You’re lucky.”

His friend sighed. “Yeah, I am. Too bad you didn’t have better luck.”

As well as not being a hero, he wasn’t a martyr, either. He refused to blame anyone else or make any excuses for what had happened to him. “We make our own luck.”

“By letting Powell into the program, you made yourself some bad luck, my friend,” Billy warned. “You’re going to have no escape from her now.”

It didn’t much matter where Erin went. He already had no escape from her. She was in his head…and under his skin.

“Why’d you bring her there?” Billy persisted.

Kent shrugged, keeping the grimace from his face as muscles tightened in his back. “I don’t know.”

“You want to get her to change her mind about you,” the younger officer guessed correctly.

“About the department,” Kent insisted, unwilling to admit everything.

After all the things she’d written about him, Erin Powell should be the last woman to whom Kent was attracted. But his instincts told him there was something more to her, something she didn’t want him to know. And he’d never been able to resist a mystery. Of course, his instincts had gotten too rusty to trust, so he could be wrong. He might have just imagined the hint of vulnerability in her brown eyes.

His roommate remarked, “Seems like her biggest problem is with you.”

“Seems like,” he agreed.

Billy leaned back on the sofa again and closed his eyes, almost idly asking, “So are you going to finally find out why she has a problem with you?”

“How?” She was too stubborn to tell him.

“You may have been desked, but you’re still one of the best cops Lakewood’s ever had. You know how,” his roommate insisted.

“Beat a confession out of her?” Kent asked with a laugh. “That’s the kind of cop she seems to think I was.”

“She doesn’t know a damn thing about you.”

“No.” And she seemed to think he didn’t know a thing about her. Maybe it was time—past time, actually—that he did. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Erin Powell.

Chapter Three

Erin’s hand trembled as she closed it around the door handle of the editor-in-chief’s office. When she had come into the Chronicle—late again—she had found a note on her desk ordering her to see Mr. Stein immediately. He stood in front of the windows looking out over the rain-slicked city of Lakewood, his back to her. Quaint brick buildings lined the cobblestone streets, and in the distance whitecaps rose on Lake Michigan, slapping against the shoreline.

She cleared the nervousness from her voice. “Sir? You wanted to see me?”

“You finally made it in?” he asked, without turning toward her.

“I was working from home, sir,” she said, hoping to pacify him with the partial truth. “I do some of my best work from home.”

The heavyset man finally left the windows and dropped into the leather chair behind his desk. On his blotter was a printout of the article she had turned in the day before: Public Information Officer Admits Cushy Job a Made-Up Position. “The reason I wanted to talk to you is because I’ve been getting complaints about you.”

So she wasn’t being called on the carpet over her tardiness this time. She winced as if she could feel the dart between her eyes. “Let me guess—Sergeant Terlecki?”

“No, surprisingly,” Herb Stein said as he leaned back, his chair creaking in protest due to his substantial weight. “I think he’s the only one who hasn’t complained.”

Erin’s face heated. “Then…who?”

“Just about everyone else down at the department, and quite a lot of the general public.”

She wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t been welcomed very warmly by anyone at the class or the bar afterward a few days before. But still it stung, having people dislike her. Yet she hadn’t joined the CPA to make friends; she was after the truth.

“I had some serious doubts about hiring you,” Herb admitted. “You didn’t have much experience, going from college directly into the Peace Corps.”

“I was a journalist with the college paper,” she reminded him. “And I wrote several freelance articles while I was in the Corps.” She’d been in South America, teaching in a remote village school and helping out at the local clinic and wherever else she had been needed. She hadn’t known then how much she’d been needed back home.

“That bleeding heart stuff.” He dismissed the work of which she was the proudest. “I didn’t think you had it in you to be a real journalist. That’s why I’ve kept you on probation.”

Dread filled her, but she had to know. “Are you firing me now?”

Her boss laughed. “Hell, no. At least people are reading your byline. That’s more than I can say about some of the other staff. I hired you because I thought that even for a bleeding heart, you had potential. That you had some drive.”

Jason was her drive. Jason and Mitchell. She had to help them. “I do.”

“You’ve proved me right.”

Erin uttered a sigh of relief. “You had me worried that I was losing my job.”

“No, in fact, I like this new angle—you attending the Citizen’s Police Academy.”

“Uh, that’s great.” She actually wasn’t that certain she’d made the right choice in joining. Terlecki wouldn’t let anyone but him answer her queries, and he never answered the most important question. Then again, she couldn’t ask him outright if he’d framed her brother to pad his arrest record. He was too smart to make any incriminating admissions.

She was also worried about Jason. While the class met only one night a week, he hated being separated from her. Dropping the six-year-old at school every morning had become an ordeal. He claimed to be sick, and since he did have asthma and allergies, she was never certain if he was telling the truth. Her stomach tightened now with guilt over leaving him with his first-grade teacher. While the older woman had assured her that he was always fine the moment Erin left, she was concerned.

“Did you hear me?” Herb asked, his voice sharp with impatience.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Erin said, face heating. “What were you saying?”

Her lack of attention apparently forgiven, he grinned. “I’m going to give you your own column to report on what happens while you’re in the academy.”

Her own column? If she truly were the ambitious reporter Kent thought her, she would be thrilled. Instead, nervous tension coursed through her. Could she handle a column, in addition to her regular coverage of the police beat and taking care of her nephew?

“Thank you, sir,” she finally murmured, “I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

“Just keep writing like this,” he said, slapping his hand on the copy of her last article. He chuckled with glee. “I love it.”

“I HATE IT.”

The chief chuckled as he settled onto the chair behind his desk. “I think the feeling’s mutual.”

“I said I hate it,” Kent clarified as he paced the small space between the chief’s desk and the paneled office walls. “I hate the article, not her.”

But it wasn’t just an article anymore—she had been given her own column: Powell on Patrol, which was to be like a weekly journal of her adventures in the Citizen’s Police Academy.

“I suspect her boss and my friend the mayor had something to do with this,” the chief admitted. He and the mayor were hardly friends, more like barely civil enemies.

Kent suspected their animosity had something to do with the chief’s wife, since the mayor had pretty much dropped any civility since her death a year ago. “Joel Standish does own the Chronicle and control Herb Stein.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think they’re twisting her arm to write this stuff. She really seems to hate you.” The chief slapped the paper against his desk. “I’d hate her, too, if I were you.” Anger flushed the older man’s face.

Kent laughed at his even-mannered boss expressing such a sentiment. Maybe Kent didn’t have the loving family his roommate had, but the department was his family, and there was no one more loyal than a fellow officer. “That’s you.”

“C’mon, you have to hate her,” Frank Archer insisted. “Look at how she twisted your words.”

Kent took the proffered paper from his boss’s outstretched hand. “I read it.” He didn’t even glance at the column as he recited from memory, “‘Public information officer Sergeant Terlecki admits his cushy job at the Lakewood Police Department is a made-up position.’”

“She did twist your words, right?” The chief leaned forward. “Because I remember you saying something pretty similar when I offered you the job.”

“We hadn’t had a public information officer before,” Kent reminded him. The chief—and his predecessor—had always handled the press themselves. If he’d been too busy, his secretary had claimed he wasn’t available for comment.

“But other departments that aren’t even as big as ours have public information officers to deal with the media, and we should, too,” Frank insisted. “We needed one. We needed you.”

Kent stopped his pacing and held the man’s pale blue gaze. “You didn’t create the job because…”

“Because you took a bullet for me?” The chief shook his head. “Son, I’d take it back if I could.”

“The job?” He deliberately misunderstood, his lips twitching into a smile.

“The bullet.”

“Nobody can take the bullet out.” Not without a seventy-five percent chance of leaving him paralyzed. Those weren’t odds Kent was willing to take a risk on; as Billy had said, he wasn’t lucky.

“Have you checked with a surgeon recently?” Chief Archer asked. “There are new medical advances all the time. You could go to the University of Michigan or the Mayo—”

“I’m fine, really,” he assured his boss, whom he also thought of as a friend. Despite Kent’s insistence, he knew that Frank Archer would always feel guilty that Kent had gotten hurt while protecting him.

“You’re bored out of your mind in this job,” the chief stated.

Apparently Kent hadn’t done very well hiding his dissatisfaction. He tapped a finger against the newspaper he held. “Erin Powell keeps things interesting.”

The chief’s pale eyes narrowed. “Not interesting enough, I suspect. I know you, Kent. I know you’d rather be back in the field.”

“So put me back in the field,” Kent snapped, tired of hiding his feelings to spare others’ guilt.

Betraying his inner torment, the chief closed his eyes and shook his head. “God, I wish I could, Kent, but I can’t, not without medical clearance.”

“I’m sorry,” Kent said, as his own guilt coursed through him. He hadn’t wanted to make the chief feel worse than he already did. “I know you can’t.” With the bullet so close to his spine, he was too much of a liability.

Even without surgery, there was a risk of paralysis from scar tissue pressing on nerves or the bullet moving and irrevocably damaging his spinal cord. It wouldn’t be fair to his fellow officers—the ones he might need to back up—or to the civilians he might need to protect if he was on the job. Erin had been exactly right the other night when she’d claimed that his badge was just for show.

The chief sighed, then forced a smile. “At least Erin Powell keeps you from being bored senseless in your cushy job.”

“That she does.” Kent gripped the paper tighter and glanced down at the picture of her next to the byline of her new column. While he didn’t betray it to his boss, anger gripped him. He wanted to wring her pretty little neck. She had deliberately twisted every damn word he’d spoken to her the other night.

“You should tell her,” the chief advised.

“How I came by my nickname?” Kent shook his head. “No, we agreed to keep that from the public.”

“Back then. Three years ago. Keeping it secret was your first decision as public information officer.” The chief’s eyes filled with pride. “You were on your way to surgery at the time.”

The surgery hadn’t removed the bullet, though the doctors still claimed they had saved his life. But Kent couldn’t do his job anymore, so he had no life. At least not the life he used to have—the one he wanted.

“It was a good decision,” Kent insisted. Keeping the attempt on the chief’s life quiet had been a good decision, but maybe he should have had the bullet taken out, and risked paralysis.

“You really don’t want the public to make you a hero,” the chief mused, shaking his head.

“Not when someone else has to be the villain.”

“But the woman shot you!” The older man’s voice shook with emotion.

“She was trying to shoot you,” Kent reminded him. “I think we both agree that Mrs. Ludlowe paid for what she did. It wouldn’t be fair to open up all that pain again.” And reporters like Erin Powell would be only too happy to do that. He tossed the paper onto the chief’s cluttered desk.

Frank leaned back in his chair and sighed, then grabbed the paper and crumpled it up. “This is not fair to you. You’re taking another bullet that isn’t meant for you.”

Kent grinned. “Oh, I have a feeling this bullet is meant only for me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. It’s past time I learned.” He was going to take Billy’s advice, polish up his rusty investigative skills and finally figure out what Erin Powell’s problem was with him.

“Be careful, Kent,” the chief advised. “You haven’t been out in the field for a while.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He waved dismissively and headed for the door. “I’ve been dodging Erin Powell’s bullets for a year now.”

“You haven’t dodged them all, Bullet,” the chief reminded him. “Be careful.”

ERIN JOLTED, and her computer slid from her lap onto the floor in front of the couch. “Da—” She swallowed the curse as the door rattled again under a hammering fist. She scrambled toward it, pulling it open with a “Shh…!”

Her heart pounded harder at the sight of the man leaning against the jamb. Instead of his black uniform, he wore faded jeans and a black leather jacket over a T-shirt that had molded to the impressive muscles of his chest. His hair was a darker blond, damp from a shower.

She swallowed a traitorous sigh. “Oh, it’s you….”

“You shouldn’t open your door before you know who’s on the other side,” Sergeant Terlecki chastised her.

“You’re lucky I didn’t know who was pounding down my door,” she pointed out. “What do you want, Sergeant?” She noted the wrinkled newspaper he clutched. “Are you here to congratulate me on my new column?”

He crumpled the paper in his fist. “What I want is a retraction.”

She shook her head, then tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t.”

“What do you have against me, Erin? What have I ever done to you? I’m too old to have gone to school with you and ignored you.”

Just. He was only five years older than she was, but she refrained from mentioning that.

He leaned closer until his handsome face was mere inches from hers. “And if I’d gone to school with you, I know I would never have ignored you.”

She couldn’t fight the smile curving her lips. So his new method for handling her was to turn on his infamous charm, which served him so well with the network reporters. “You’re flirting with me now?”

“Don’t act so surprised,” he admonished with a grin of his own. “I’ve flirted with you before.”

“You have?” She widened her eyes in disbelief. “When was that? When you dragged me into an empty room? When you pinned my picture to a dartboard?”

“You didn’t know I was flirting?” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I must have gotten rusty.”

“No, I can’t believe…” She lifted her hand to push back her hair again, but this time her fingers trembled, so she propped her hand on her hip. She couldn’t let him get to her. “Why—why would you flirt with me? You must hate me.”

That steely gaze of his focused on her. “You want me to hate you.”

No, she wanted to hate him. How could she not, after what he’d done?

“I should,” he said. “It’s pretty clear you have it in for me.” He tossed the torn newspaper atop the cluttered table just inside her foyer. “I want to know why.”

“I thought you knew.”

He grinned. “That you’re ambitious, that you’ll do anything to get ahead? Yeah, I know that. But I think there’s more to you, Erin Powell—more to us.”

She started to swing the door shut on his handsome face. “There is no us.”

He pressed his palm against the panel, holding it open. “Oh, there’s something here.”

“Hatred, remember?” She levered her weight against the door, but it still didn’t move, his hand holding it effortlessly.

He shook his head. “I don’t hate you.”

“Give me time.”

His brow furrowed with confusion. “So you are out to destroy me?”

“I think it’s only fair.” Since he had destroyed her brother’s life and a little boy’s whole world.

“Why, Erin?” Kent asked, as if it bothered him, as if he cared what she thought, what she felt. “What did I ever do to you?”

Maybe she should tell him, so he would understand that flirting with her was a waste of his time and hers. She only wanted one thing from him—the truth. “You—”

A cry caught Erin’s attention. The fear in it had her whirling away and racing down the hall, calling out, “It’s okay. I’m here….”

Stunned, Kent stepped inside the open door. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might not live alone. She didn’t wear a wedding band or even an engagement ring. He had checked the first time he’d met the beauty at a press conference—before she’d started with her impertinent questions.

Curious, and concerned about the cry, he followed her. He stumbled over toys in the hall outside the doorway where she’d disappeared. Inside the room she knelt beside a twin bed, her arms wrapped tight around a small, trembling body.

Kent slipped quietly into the bedroom. She was totally unaware of his presence as she focused on the boy, who must have been about five or six. Since speaking at school assemblies was part of his duties as public information officer, Kent spent a lot of time around kids now. Before he’d been injured, the thought of doing so would have scared him more than getting shot, but talking to schoolkids had actually become one of the high points of his new job. The children sometimes asked tougher questions than reporters, though. Well, all reporters besides Erin Powell.

He never would have imagined that aggressive journalist was the same woman who cuddled the crying child, soothing him with a calming voice and a tender touch. A part of Kent had suspected there was more to Erin Powell, something softer and more vulnerable—something that had attracted his interest in spite of her animosity toward him.

She pressed her lips to the boy’s forehead. “Shh…”

Now Kent understood her shushing him at the door. She hadn’t wanted to disturb the boy. Was he her son?

“Go back to sleep, Jason,” she urged the whimpering child. “Everything’s okay.”

The boy sniffled. “I heard somebody yelling.”

“It was nothing, honey,” Erin said, her voice filled with a gentleness Kent would not have considered her capable of. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“But I heard a guy,” Jason said, as if having a man in Erin’s apartment was unusual. “He was yelling at you.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Kent spoke up from the shadows of the room.

Both the child and Erin tensed and turned toward him. “You shouldn’t have followed me,” she told him. “You shouldn’t have just walked in.”

“I’m sorry,” Kent repeated to the boy, ignoring her irritation that he had let himself inside her apartment. He would not argue with her in front of the child.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, as if coming to the same realization.

“I wasn’t yelling. Really,” Kent assured the child. “I was just talking loud. I didn’t know you were sleeping.” He hadn’t known about the kid at all.

“Who are you?” the little boy asked, staring up at Kent with wide eyes that were the same shade of chocolate-brown as Erin’s.

“I’m Serge—”

“He’s a friend,” Erin interrupted. “Now you have to go back to sleep, honey. You have school in the morning.” She pulled the covers up to the boy’s chin and kissed his forehead. With his dark hair and those eyes and delicate features, he looked very much like Erin.

A pressure shifted in Kent’s chest, releasing some of his resentment toward her. He’d been right—there was much more to Erin Powell than she was willing to reveal.

She rose from her knees and reached out, grasping Kent’s arm to pull him from the room. He could have resisted her effort to give him the bum’s rush, but he followed, admiring the swing of her narrow hips beneath her cotton pajama bottoms. Instead of a matching top, she wore an old gray sweatshirt.

She didn’t speak until they’d left the hall and returned to the living room. “You need to leave,” she told him. Although she kept it low, her voice vibrated with anger. “You shouldn’t have come here. You have no right to barge into my home.”

“You just called me a friend,” he reminded her with a grin.

Her eyes narrowed with irritation. “I lied.”

“To your son?” Kent had to know—was the boy hers? With the similarity between them, he had to be.

“You have no right to interfere in my life,” she protested as she headed straight to the door and opened it. “Where I live, who I live with is none of your business.”

“You made it mine with every venomous word you wrote about me.” He closed his hand over hers and pressed the door closed. “You’re my business now, Erin, so I’m going to find out everything there is to know about you.”

She turned toward him, her eyes wide. “You can’t—”

“I can,” he assured her. “Despite what you think, I’m still a real cop.”

“Have you forgotten a little thing called freedom of the press?” she asked. “I won’t stop writing about you. You can’t intimidate me.”

“No, I can’t,” he agreed. “Unless you have something to hide, something you don’t want me to find out.”

Chapter Four

“I have nothing to hide,” she lied, her breath catching. She didn’t want him to know anything about her, most especially not about her brother. If Kent knew what she was after, he would cover his tracks even better than he already had. She’d gone over and over all his arrest records and had found nothing to help Mitchell. Yet.

She tugged her hand free of Kent’s and stepped back, trying to put some distance between them.

But he moved closer, his shoulders casting a wide shadow in the foyer. “Nothing?” he asked. “The fact that you have a son is nothing?”

She glanced back at the hall leading to Jason’s bedroom. “I never said he’s my son.”

“He’s not?”

She lifted her shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. “I could just be babysitting.” Which she was, until she found proof that Terlecki had framed Mitchell.

“He looks so much like you that he must be a relative,” Kent said, with such certainty that she lifted a brow.

“My nephew,” she admitted, although she had grown to think of him as more than that over the past year.

“And you’re not just babysitting him.”

She swallowed, her mouth watering from nerves. “You think you know everything,” she scoffed, but she was afraid that he soon would.

“Not everything,” he said, shaking his head. His hair had completely dried, the strands a pale gold color again. “I know the boy lives with you. He has his own room, and there are toys all over.”

“Maybe I’m just a really loving aunt.”

“I don’t doubt that,” he admitted. “I can tell the two of you are very close. Too close for you to be just babysitting. You’re obviously his principal caregiver, or even his guardian. How did that come about?”

She decided to tell him what she told anyone else nosy enough to push for an answer. “His parents weren’t able to care for him anymore.”

“What happened?” Kent pressed. “Did they die?”

“They’re not dead.” Not yet. Although Mitchell had been in prison for four years already, she worried about him being able to survive there much longer. Certainly he wouldn’t last the rest of his ten-year sentence.

“Then why can’t they care for him anymore?”

Her heart thumped hard. For a year, with no success, she’d been trying to learn Kent’s secrets. After less than an hour in her home he was entirely too close to learning hers. “That’s none of your business.”

He shook his head. “We’ve been through this already. You’ve made yourself my business, Erin—” he stepped nearer, his chest bumping her shoulder “—with every article you’ve written attacking me. And now this column of yours—Powell on Patrol…” He snorted in derision.

“You just can’t take the truth,” she snapped, refusing to allow him to intimidate her. She planted her feet on the hardwood floor so she wouldn’t move back, even though her pulse raced with his nearness.

His gunmetal-gray eyes narrowed. “No, I think you’re the one who can’t take it.”

Did he already know the truth? Was it possible that he had talked to her mother?

“Just because someone wants you to believe something doesn’t make it true,” she insisted, tilting up her chin with defiance and pride.

“I hope everyone who reads your articles and your new column realizes that.” He lifted his hand and slid his thumb along her jaw. “I’m not the bad guy you want everyone to think I am.”

Not everyone. Just herself. She wanted to believe he was the bad guy, but his touch, so gentle against her skin, distracted her.

“You’re flirting with me again,” she said, reminding herself that turning on the charm was probably just another of his tactics.

“That’s not flirting,” Kent said as he lowered his head, his face nearing hers. “This is flirting….” His mouth touched hers, lips brushing across lips.

Erin’s heart shifted, then beat hard and fast. She reached out, intending to push him away, but her palms pressed against the hard wall of his chest. His heart was racing as frantically as hers.

He closed his arms around her, pulling her tight against him, and deepened the kiss.

Erin’s lips clung to his, returning his passion with a surge of her own. She opened her mouth, and the tip of his tongue slid across her bottom lip. Heat flashed through her body, yet she shivered.

“Erin…” he murmured, as if uncertain that she was really in his arms.

What the hell am I doing? Disbelief doused her desire. She shoved her hands forcefully against his chest, pushing him back. “No!”

“Erin—”

Remembering her nephew, she lowered her voice and said, “Please, get out….”

She closed her eyes, shame washing over her. How had she forgotten about Jason? How had she forgotten about Mitchell and what Kent had done to him? Taking him away from his son, from her?

Kent’s hand, shaking slightly, closed around the doorknob. “Erin—”

“Just leave….”

She didn’t open her eyes again until she heard the door close behind him. Tears of guilt blurred her vision, the mahogany door wavering in and out of focus. She lifted a hand to her mouth, intending to wipe away every last trace of his kiss, but her lips still tingled with the sensation of his mouth against hers. She licked her lips and tasted him.

How could I have enjoyed his kiss? How could I have kissed him back?

She latched the chain and bolted the door, wishing she could lock him out of her mind as easily as she could her apartment. Yet he wouldn’t leave, not until she got justice for her brother.

She walked back to her nephew’s room, leaning against the doorjamb to study his face in the faint glow of his night-light. He slept peacefully, blissfully unaware of what his aunt had done, and whom she had allowed into their home.

The man who had taken away his father. The man who had given Jason nightmares, because the child had been there four years ago when Sergeant Terlecki, working vice, had led a special response unit into their home. The team had broken down the door and, with their big guns and loud voices, had stormed the apartment.

Just a toddler, Jason had been too young to have a clear memory of that day when Kent had arrested his father. But ever since then, the little boy had had nightmares and a paralyzing fear of police officers.

Erin hadn’t feared Kent Terlecki—until tonight. Until he kissed her. And she didn’t actually fear him as much as she feared what he had made her feel. Desire.

WHAT HAD HE BEEN THINKING?

He walked into the Lighthouse, grateful for the noise that surged out of the open door like a wave. Hopefully, it would be too damn loud for him to think, to replay in his mind what he’d just done.

He had kissed Erin Powell, the reporter determined to destroy him and the department. Or maybe the department was just collateral damage. He would bet that her real intention was to ruin him.

Was that why she’d kissed him back? To trick him, to mess with his head? The kiss had been even more effective at doing that than anything she’d written. Yet he suspected he hadn’t been the only one that kiss had rattled.

Nodding at people who waved or shouted in greeting, he made his way through the crowd to the bar. The bartender, an auburn-haired beauty named Brigitte, greeted him with a smile. “Hey, Sarge, your usual?”

His usual was Bloody Mary mix on ice, without the alcohol. Tonight he felt like he needed the bloody. The bloodier the better. He shook his head. “Shot of tequila.”

Brigitte, whom he thought he’d seen the other night at the CPA, lifted a brow. “Really?”

“Really?” Paddy parroted as he swiveled the stool he was sitting on toward Kent. “You don’t usually imbibe.”

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